The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Re: David Mark in the vortex of history

    Re: David Mark in the vortex of history

    Dear readers, this article was first published here February 17, 2012 and re-run March 30, 2012. I serve it to you a third time as this matter has assumed a global dimension; and embarrassingly so too. The Economist of London in its current edition brands Nigerian lawmakers as the highest paid in the world. There is nothing to add to it than to reiterate the Igbo adage that when a baby sobs and points at a direction, if its mother isn’t there, its father surely must be.

    Leaders without vision do not care about history. They are too dim and too enamored with the trappings of this fleeting moment to spare a thought for tomorrow. They bury themselves in the inane perquisites of today’s office and position; they deny the reality of tomorrow and ignore the power of history. But surely there will be tomorrow and history will be told as long as there is life on earth. If only leaders in positions would stop awhile and pop the question at themselves: how will history judge me?

    How will history judge the current Senate President, David Bonaventure Mark? I have elected to ask this question on this page for many reasons. First it was triggered by the news recently that each Senator will get a N16 million state-of-the-art jeep as official car and second, at the end of this tenure, he would have been in the Senate for a total of 16 years, eight of which would have been at the helm of the National Assembly (NASS) as Senate President. This position makes him the de facto number two man in the land. But most important, providence has hoisted him onto a position to tinker with history, to shape history, to direct history and in deed to make history. So we ask today, what has he done (will he do in the remaining period) with this gavel of history handed to him? But sorry to say that so far, he has bungled his moments in history and here are some reasons why:

    Poor personal leadership example: As has been mentioned above, the senate presidency is the second most powerful and influential position in the land and Mark would have done eight years by 2015. Under a more perspicacious and insightful personage, that position has the capacity to bring about far-reaching changes in Nigeria. By sheer effusion of personal examples from the man at the helm, the legislative arm (down to the State assemblies) would have been the unblinking moral compass of the various governments.

    We saw a glimmer of this leadership precept in the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. He said he would uphold the rule of law, he showed practical examples at the critical time and soon the judiciary caught on to it and this was reflected in the court rulings of that time. He declared his assets and made it public for the whole world to see; the first time any president would do that in our recent history. Without being prompted, his vice and other governors followed suit. In less than three years, Yar’Adua made more salutary impact on the psyche of Nigerians and had more positive influence on our system than President Olusegun Obasanjo did in eight years. Today, the bonfire billowing in the upper chamber can be seen burning most assuredly in all the houses of assembly across the land. Just like the Senate, they have all become hollow chambers of mercantilism and debauchery.

    Lack of probity and transparency: All of a sudden Nigerians can’t tell anymore, how much their legislators earn. All we know now is that being a legislator in Nigeria (at any level) is the best job in the world. It must be the highest paying and most risk-free job known anywhere. Never a headache from any graft agency as other government officials suffer; in spite of the cries and clamour by the populace the legislature insists on creating a fiscal haven of its own that defies appropriation acts and revenue guidelines.

    The hallowed chambers of the National Assembly seem ensconced in the bosom of mammon and held spell bound by its self-awarded boundless perquisites of office. NASS is certainly the new honey pot of a rotten Republic. Legislators have become so licentious that they would corral banks into granting them billions of naira in loans to share. At what interest rates and costs to the taxpayer? It is on this framework that the current Senators would award themselves a N16 million official car in a time of severe austerity in the land. At a period the populace has been badgered into relinquishing the only ‘subsidy’ they enjoy; at a time that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has determined that 100 million Nigerians are dirt poor earning less the$1 a day. It is doubtful if any other senator anywhere in the world rides such an exotic machine at tax payers’ expense.

    Oversight function, oversight extortion: This is the most critical function of the legislature apart from passing bills. But this key instrument of check and balance has been bastardised and debased. It has become an instrument for self-aggrandisement and extortion. MDAs across the country are comatose and non-functioning because oversight function on them is weak or nonexistent. If the legislature is compromised by the MDAs where would it find the moral authority to exercise oversight? Any wonder things like turnaround maintenance (TAM) on our refineries are mired, a road project right under the nose of the Senate in Abuja is overpriced to the tune of N38 billion; corruption grows organic and cancerous in the land eating up the entire fabric of the society yet nobody seems to know what to do. What about the probe panels in various legislative assemblies? Mum is the word on this ‘cash cow’.

    People alienated and unrepresented: May we urge the Senate President to do an unscheduled tour of the constituency offices of his members and while at it, inspect the constituency projects for which huge funds are allotted to his members. It is a stark fact that most Nigerians do not know their legislators; there is hardly any functional constituency office anywhere, no projects for monies allotted and no town hall meetings. No country will grow one inch with legislators of this ilk.

    In conclusion, the NASS has become very toxic to this country, unbeknown to the members. The onus is on David Mark to resolve to pick his spot in history. Let’s note that history is not about the wealthiest man or the most powerful of his time but about he who brings the most positive change to his people and society. Fortunately he still has a bit of time. Few quick things he can do quietly with his colleagues include fashioning out a simple, workable code of conduct,; making sure that member have standard and functional constituency offices, ensure town hall meetings are held regularly by members, ensure that the auditor-general of the federation does his work and releases his annual report promptly, and ensure probity, accountability and transparency in the finances of the Senate. The Senate can rescue the country from the current slide down the slope if it resolves to have a fresh start.

  • Youth rights, elder rights, and generational integration•

    Youth rights, elder rights, and generational integration•

    The language of rights makes an interesting if not incongruous rendering of the relationship that the individual has or is expected to have to the community in typical African climes. The language of responsibility would appear to capture that relationship more appropriately. Still, we cannot pretend that the contemporary practice of rights has no bearing on the traditional expectation of responsibility. Indeed, it is now not uncommon for the most sacred of traditional institutions—the monarchy—to be embroiled in disputes that only get resolved by appeal to the language of rights—in the court of law.

    With an acknowledgement of the force of rights in contemporary societies then, we may address a few issues of significance to the social relations that subsist the African world,

    To focus the discussion, I would like to make an arbitrary distinction between tradition and contemporary iterations of some of the conditions that afflict the African world, including the social, political, economic, and cultural situations.

    Traditionally, the social condition of Africa cannot be described in paradisical terms. But it was also not as hellish as some may want us to believe. It was simple and rustic, orderly and peaceful before the era of greed and ego-driven ambitions set in. Individuals had a sense of place and a sense of their responsibilities within the community of interrelated persons.

    Everywhere now, the ideal of community is being rediscovered; but it was Africa that gave the idea to the world and it is to Africa that the world is looking for clues concerning the meaning and requirements of community. Unfortunately, Africa has moved on to other not-so-flattering ideals of life, including those that prioritise the good of individual accumulation and acquisition over the good of communal life. From “ajooje o dun benikan o ni, we moved to bamu bamu ni mo yo, emi o mo pebi n pomo enikookan. From the sweetness of cooperative living, we move to the worshipping of the self and contempt for the other.

    We have not been able to deal with this disastrous move effectively because the sanctions are no longer there.

    Contemporary political conditions ensure that traditional sanctions against egoistic acquisition are rendered illegal and illegitimate. And we keep getting better at institutionalizing corruption even when we make insincere noise about its unacceptability. Family name and community integrity used to be guided zealously. Thus a father would disown a son who brought shame to the family name through corrupt practices. And a whole community would distance itself from a member that brought it into disrepute. Today, a father would pressure a son to bring as much “dividends of democracy” to the family even if it means stealing billions and trillions of public funds. And there are traditional rulers who not only aid and abet “sons of the soil” known to be neck deep in corruption, but who themselves are active participants in the rush for contracts that are not to be executed because deals had been made.

    We now acquire political power with a distinct purpose of enriching the self as opposed to benefitting the people and the community. Yet we do it in the name of the people—my people need my service—and my service is to benefit no one but myself and my family.

    On account of our political conditions, our economy is matching forward in one step and backwards in four. I do not need to bore you with what you know. Indeed, young men and women are the major victims with unemployment as high as 40%. If four out of 10 youth members in a community are unable to get a decent job even after they do what we ask them to do—get a good education—the elders have shacked their responsibility and cannot be accorded respect. Traditionally, we know that “agba ti o lajeku yoo ru gba e doko. What is happening to our youths is a reflection of the poverty of the elderly efforts to provide for them.

    This may be why we are also not in a position to preach the gospel of culture. What culture? Orisa boo le gbe mi, fi mi sile boo ti ba mi. If our culture has been so bankrupted by the elders that the youth see no value in their immersion into it, we are doomed as a people. For culture identifies and while the phenomenon of cultural borrowing is still real, without our own identity, we are just going to become beggars in the land of other cultures. We are seeing this already. 70% of our elites don’t allow their children to speak Yoruba language in the house. This is even when both parents are Yoruba. The vogue is to have kids speak English as their mother tongue. Yet there is a large amount of good research on the benefits of the mother tongue for learning. Not only this, there is also plenty of good evidence that children are capable of learning and speaking multiple languages at very tender ages.

    An effective response to the conditions that militate against the progressive development of the African world is not just one that focuses on the youth. Indeed, from my submission above, the elders need a reorientation away from practices and institutions that damage the sense and spirit of community that has always been the strength of Africa and its Diaspora. It is for instance a thing of shame that the spiritual realm of contemporary Africa cannot be guaranteed as a solution to the challenge of crass materialism because the spiritual realm itself has become a theater of the absurd with cut-throat competition for sinful souls not because they need salvation but because it is their kind that the preacher needs for a fat bank account.

    There is a need to integrate spirit and matter. Surely the youth need a spiritual anchor that enables them to start firm and rooted in the face of the winds of change blowing across the African world. I submit however, that for that foundation to be strong, it has to be built on a solid material formation. We must prioritise institutions that cater to the material needs of the youth so as to give them the strength for spiritual renewal. It is not a coincidence that our people say that ebi kii wo nu ki oran mii woo. A hungry person is a potential prey or victim of spiritual swindlers. The community needs to guard its own from the vultures of religious zealotry. The poor are being promised virgins upon successful suicide mission and they easily buy it because of their condition. Assume that the nation has invested in the education of those young ones and has ensured that they had gainful employment upon completion of their studies; can anyone imagine that they would fall prey to the sugar-coated mouths of wicked mullahs?

    African peoples need a break from poverty, violence, political instability, and generalised social malaise. Africa has made some substantial contributions to the world culturally and spiritually. Now Africa and its people need to focus attention on building economic institutions that serve the purpose of cultural and spiritual renewal—institutions that prioritise the good of the community which ultimately translates into the good of individuals. If we bring together the collective efforts of the people to harness the collective resources of the people, there has to be bountiful results. Cooperatives and collectives have featured in our traditions with good results. We need to revive that spirit for the sake of the young ones who are fast losing hope in our collective humanity.

  • Hell on Lagos-Ibadan expressway

    On Sunday, June 30, at two o’clock in the afternoon, I left the Redemption Camp for an appointment in Ikeja, a distance of about 40km. I got to Ikeja at about six o’clock, four hours later. When the journey was taking too long because of the horrible roads and the traffic snarl, I many times decided to turn back but the median divide prevented me from doing so until I was almost at the Berger Bridge. I had a premonition that I had not seen anything yet because the traffic going towards the Ibadan end was beginning to build up. After a brief stay in Lagos, I hit the road to go back to the camp at about 7pm; I had no problem from Lagos to somewhere near the Mountain of Fire Camp. From there on to the Redemption camp perhaps about 15km away, I spent six hours. I did not get home until 1am on Monday morning. This is a record for a 40km journey that started on Sunday afternoon and finally ended Monday morning. Within that time, I could have flown to the United States from Nigeria.

    My colleagues said I was very lucky to have even made it home alive because whenever there is this type of traffic situation, people are routinely robbed while waiting in their cars and dispossessed of whatever money or valuables they might have on them. I kept asking myself where the Nigerian government is. Yet we are in a country that is over-governed with 774 local governments, 36 state governments and Abuja and at the apex is the Federal Government, the behemoth in Abuja. In spite of these multitudinous governments, the only arterial road linking the port of Lagos with the South-west, South-south, South-east and the northern states has remained in a state of total disrepair since the government of Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. Since that time, trillions of dollars have been earned by the country and 80 or more percent of them have been spent on oiling government wheels and paying huge allowances to all kinds of government functionaries while the people have been totally forgotten and ignored. At about 12 midnight, I saw children and toddlers holding to their mothers who had alighted from the public run-down buses to trek home to various villages along the highway. On that particular night, it was raining cats and dogs and the peels of thunder and lightning were frighteningly audible everywhere. One can then imagine the way the little children must have felt. I asked myself several times over how Nigeria has got to this pass. I also asked myself what is so difficult in tarring and maintaining roads that our governments cannot do. If we can fail in this simple task of road maintenance, then how can we expect any institution in Nigeria to work? I hate to say that Nigeria is a failed state. Certainly on that night, I felt my country had failed.

    Since 1999, we have been hearing that this road will be reconstructed with five lanes on each side. The Obasanjo regime took us through the charade of concessioning the road to Bi-Courtney, a company that had no track record of road construction. For more than three years, we held our breath and we prayed that this road will be reconstructed. We were later told that the company did not have the capacity to build the road as if we didn’t know that from the beginning. We have also heard rumours that the road will soon be reconstructed and I dare say we do not trust any government anymore. Why must it be just one road that links Lagos with all parts of Nigeria? Yet it is not that people have completely lost their senses and can no longer reason, because I can see three alternatives if we are a serious country. The Lagos-Abeokuta axis can be developed to take some burden off the Lagos-Ibadan road. The old Sagamu-Lagos road through Ikorodu can also be redeveloped to serve as an alternative to this much abused road. The Lagos-Epe Ijebu-Ode road can also be redeveloped thus providing three alternative roads to this hell on earth called Lagos-Ibadan express road.

    The initial cause of the chaos on June 30 was the conference at Deeper Life Centre along the express road. This was a Christian conference obviously to praise and worship our Lord Jesus Christ and what should have been an occasion of joy turned to sorrow for many people including elderly people, little children, women who should not be on the road in the midnight and pregnant women some of whom lost their pregnancies as a result of the hardship inflicted on them by a church organisation. It is high time for all the churches and mosques along this highway to get involved in alleviating the pains of our people. I do not see why some of these churches including my own should not be asked to build flyovers carrying their worshippers to and fro their camps onto the highways without impeding the flow of traffic under the flyovers. I know that this can only be done with the permission of the state but some of the church leaders have influence with government and they should use that influence to persuade the government of the need for them to assume their civic responsibilities. We are a very lucky people in this country because Nigerians do not ordinarily rebel against governments but there are enough reasons why people should cry out before it is too late. Our people’s demands on government are very little because most members of the middle class provide the basic needs that should have been provided by government such as security, light, water, education and sometimes roads to their homes and businesses with the effect that government is almost irrelevant. The only reason we don’t have another Agbekoya or a people’s revolt is because apart from the salary earners, very few Nigerians pay taxes except those who live in Lagos and people like myself who have to pay Land Use charge. I hope this current paradigm of do-nothing governments will not endure for too long to the period where as a result of diminishing returns from oil, Nigerians will then be called upon to pay taxes. It is then that our government will be made to realise that democracy is government of the people, by the people but most importantly for the people. Our governments right now are not governments for the people. This is why the most important road in the country will be left unattended to while building in Abuja a 10-lane road running from the airport to the city while totally neglecting the economic and financial centres of the country.

  • Mission to save Nigeria

    Mission to save Nigeria

    Five governors have embarked on a shuttle diplomacy  to save the country from destruction. Though of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the governors know that our democracy is being threatened by the actions of some people at the highest level of their party. If we look around us today to  see what is happening, we will be shocked by what these supposed guardians of our  democracy are doing. They don’t care that by their actions, our  democracy may become  perilled. All they are after is the here and now. It is what they get now that matters to them not the future of democracy.

    We didn’t get to where we are today on a platter. It was a long and hard fought battle that got us to this stage of the nation’s life. Some people paid the supreme price for us to enjoy this democracy. If for nothing else,  we should, at least,  remember  these people and what they stood for and make this democracy work. In the past few months, the country has been on tenterhooks. It has been one induced crisis after the other all because some politicians, particularly our president, cannot accommodate others even within his own party.

    If our democracy collapses today, fingers will be pointed at  President Goodluck Jonathan for laying the foundation for it. The president cannot claim ignorance over what is happening in the polity today because he is fully involved in it through proxies. These proxies are ready to die doing his bidding. It is hard to believe that Jonathan can be involved in anything that can derail our  democracy, but that is what is happening. The governors have seen through the lie that he is not involved in the whole mess and that is why they are going about pleading with elder statesmen to intervene before this house falls.

    Things were not these bad when Karl Maier wrote This House Has Fallen in 2000 cataloguing Nigeria’s many crises, including that of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. We survived the June 12 crisis only to be faced with another self – inflicted one 20 years after because of some peoples’  desperation to remain in power,  albeit perpetually. Governors Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) and Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto) know that recent happenings in the polity have grave implications for the country if something is not done fast to halt the drift.

    Let us face it. Are the people feeling the impact of government? What have the two years of Jonathan brought to us as  a nation? Are we better off now  in the comity of nations than we were before his administration? The answers to these posers are painfully in the negative. United States (US) President Barack Obama was in Africa about three weeks ago but he did not visit Nigeria, the so – called giant of Africa. What does that say about our standing in the eyes of those that matter in the world. It shows that we are a giant with clay feet :  a country that is so blest, but which cannot prove its true worth in the comity of nations because of rudderless leadership. I concede that Jonathan should not take the whole blame for where we are today.

    The question is what has he done to improve our rating in the eyes of the world? Rather than worsen our plight, it is better he leaves us the way he met us, as the Yoruba will say. The president is not ready to do that. He wants to compound our woes before leaving in 2015, that is if he will go.  This is what the governors want to avoid. To avert a bigger mess in future, they have taken the initiative to intervene on behalf of the people to save our country from the hands of  a president whose sole interest is to cling to  office at all costs even when he knows he does not have the capacity to do the job. As former President Olusegun Obasanjo said in his usual ribald way, ‘’you can only look for a job for someone, you cannot assist the person to do the job’’. How true.

    The governors, who first visited Obasanjo on Saturday in his Abeokuta, Ogun State home, were in Minna, the Niger State capital on Monday to see former heads of state, Gen Ibrahim Babangida and Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar.  In Minna, they urged Babangida and Abubakar to prevail on Jonathan to ensure a level playing ground for democracy to thrive. They implored the duo to get in touch with other statesmen to save democracy. The governors are worried over the lingering Rivers State crisis and its likely consequences for democracy; destabilisation of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF); forcing governors to do the bidding of the presidency; and lack of internal democracy in the PDP.

    These were some of the issues

    they tabled before Obasanjo,

    Babangida and Abubakar. The governors are not done in their mission as they are still planning to meet other elder statesmen to seek their support. Some people may not like the faces of these governors; that should be expected anyway; but we cannot fault the mission they have embarked upon. Loyalists of the president may, as they are wont to, read meanings into the governors’  mission. They may say ha!, it’s all politics. I beg that we should leave politics out of this for the sake of our country. If we truly love Nigeria, this is the time to show it by standing up for our country. Nigeria belongs to us all. Nigeria does not belong to Jonathan because he is president. So, we must all show concern when things are going wrong.

    The governors have taken the initiative; they need our support in order to achieve result on this mission. If we don’t support them, those who feel threatened by their mission will start calling them all sorts of names. Before they start doing that, let me hasten to say that no matter how much they try to tar these governors, the people will see through their shenanigan. Is it not said that we cannot all sleep and face the same direction? That being so, those who may have an alternative to what the governors are doing are free to come up with their option but in a decorous manner and  not by truculent attacks on these personalities.

    Soon too, they may start unleashing Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operatives against these governors all because they dared to save our democracy  from the hands of a budding dictator. Did I hear you say he has become a full – blown one?

    A clash of faith

    Can man fight for God? This is a question that keeps rearing its head everywhere around the world because of the belief of those who are more catholic than the pope and more islamic than the keepers of the sacred Ka’aba in Mecca that they can fight for God.  These people with their holier than thou attitude see others who don’t  wear their faith as a badge as non – believers or infidels. Yet, these two religions tell us that nobody can fight for God. These fundamentalists do not seem to believe that. They believe that it is by fighting for God that they can make others see them as true believers.  Religion  is a matter of choice. This is why we have seen people convert from Christianity to Islam and vice versa with or without the support of their nuclear families. Usually, it is without the support of their families as we are witnessing  in the case of Charity Uzoechina, the 24-year-old daughter of a pastor, who has reportedly embraced Islam in Niger State. She is now said to be a ward of the Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, from whom she sought refuge to escape, rightly or wrongly, the wrath of her pastor father. Her purported conversion to Islam has pitted the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) against the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), which is not happy with the way the CAN leadership is handling the matter. See The Nation of Tuesday, July 23 at page 7. There is no need for CAN and NSCIA to engage in a tug of war over this issue. All we need do is invite Christy before her parents, CAN and NSCIA repesentatives and some neutral parties to tell the world where she stands on this matter. Has she ‘ported’ or not? She should be able to say; after all, she is not a minor. She knows what she wants. And of course, what she does not want.

  • The public face of President Jonathan

    The public face of President Jonathan

    Political subterfuge, which has often made President Jonathan less vulnerable, is a unique asset that sets him apart from his political foes. He cannot be easily ambushed. This came in very handy as deputy governor to the convicted but now pardoned money launderer, Alamieseigha whom he replaced as governor of Bayelsa. He was an unobtrusive vice president who played deaf to all the madness around him when Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet hijacked the presidency during his stay in a Saudi hospital. Others fought the war to make him acting president and finally president. After the battle and victory, just as he was been prodded on by ex-President Obasanjo, his god father, who often wants to play god, to denounce the provisions of the PDP constitution and run for the presidency, a reticent self-effacing Jonathan publicly stated he did not want to be distracted from achieving the goal he had set for himself- completing Yar’Adua’s agenda and conducting a credible election where every vote would count. He equally kept those who had argued vigorously that he would be the man to beat in 2015 if he rejected the bait guessing.

    He has again in the last three months maintained a dignified silence even as sycophants led by men of all seasons like Ebenezer Babatope, Iwuanyawu and Jerry Gana, gathered in Abuja to canonize him as ‘the God-ordained’, the ‘best that has ever happened to Nigeria’, the ‘leader that embodies all the virtues of our past heroes,’ a selfless leader without whom there would be no Nigeria, the liberator of Ijaw nation,; etc.

    Even as members of Rivers House of Assembly converted the mace to weapon for breaking heads, as visiting northern governors were ambushed and stoned by thugs claiming to work for the president, as oil theft reached the highest height after multi-billion dollar contract to militants who now swear there would be no Nigeria except he runs in 2015, President Jonathan has continued to maintain his peace.

    But Jonathan’s weakest link is those who constituted his public face. They have failed to complement his greatest asset. Instead of adding value to his presidency, they have made him more vulnerable. The current face off between the president and Governor Amaechi of Rivers seems to have unmasked the president either as a result of sabotage, the hall mark of PDP or share incompetence as demonstrated by Nyesom Wike, Dr Doyin Okupe, Dr..Ahmed Gulak, and even a supposedly seasoned bureaucrat like the Inspector General of police. It is curious why they all chose to deploy obsolete weapons to fight modern warfare over peoples’ minds.

    Leading the league of those who claim to be fighting the president’s yet to be declared 2015 battle is the Nyesom Wike, the minister of state (education). By strange coincidence, the academic staffs of our polytechnics and the universities are on strike with millions of our youths roaming the streets due to the failure of government to honour an agreement it signed back in 2009. What has now emerged is that the minister in charge of the critical sector had in fact been mobilizing, kitting, and training youths, militants, and five members of the Rivers State House of Assembly to replicate a strategy deployed by a few federal government backed enemies of democracy in the western house of assembly in 1962, a misadventure that marked the beginning of the end of that republic. The only innovation is the ambush of visiting northern governors, who were pelted with stones.

    Here is a former local council chairman, appointed chief of staff by Amaechi who later nominated him for a ministerial position. Now he is at war with Amaechi allegedly because he wants to be the next governor of Rivers. Even if the war is being surreptitiously fought to retain the presidency within South-south zone, as claimed by Austin Opara and some Rivers State federal legislators loyal to the president, there is surely a more creative way to win the support of the people of Rivers other than turning the state into a theatre of war. Then how does the stoning of four northern governors by hoodlums wearing the minister of education T-shirts promote the cause of the president re-election? If he secures the PDP ticket for a second term, can the votes from Rivers or even the whole of South-south zone secure the presidency for Jonathan? Or has the bungling President Jonathan foot soldiers foreclosed the possibility of his having to campaign in those four northern states whose governors were viciously attacked by hoodlums at the Port Harcourt airport?

    The outing of Okupe whose appointment, critics claimed undermined the president battle against corruption, was no less disastrous. Since no man ever wins a woman’s war, we will be expecting too much to prevail on the president to curtail the alleged excesses of his wife. Neither Babangida, Yar Adua, nor a brasher Obasanjo in power was able to manage his wife. But Okupe, paid through the public purse to shield the president by balancing his narrow interest and that of his wife against the nation’s overall interest let down the president in his hours of need. As if bereft of new ideas, Okupe, adopting an obsolete strategy of repeating lies to make them appear as truth, assaulted the public with his claim about the president non involvement in the Rivers’ crisis in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The president’s wife admission that she indeed has an axe to grind with Amaechi over his treatment of her Okrika people has only confirmed critics who from onset predicted Okupe would be a liability to Jonathan’s presidency.

    I have no doubt that Okupe knew a better strategy to shield the president would have been to descend heavily on the five legislators that behaved like thugs, distance the president from their crudity and violence, proclaim loudly that irrespective of the president’s political differences with his brother, the governor of Rivers, he would not subscribe to attempt by misguided thugs to derail our democracy. He could have boomed that the president is too decent to get involved in such an amateurish and lumbering attempt at impeaching a speaker. He could have threatened that the full weight of the law would be brought to bear on all those who caused mayhem in the Rivers House of Assembly. That could have bought Jonathan government of subterfuge time to plan for a renewed assault on Amaechi, their sworn foe and threat to 2015 president’s ambition. That would have been less offensive than grandstanding ‘President Jonathan is bigger than Amaechi’.

    In the league of those who have failed to protect the president in the current Rivers crisis is the Inspector General of Police. The only thing that resonates from all the IG has said on the crisis is ‘he had not received official complaints against Joseph Mbu from River State. That was a Freudian slip. This was a man quoted on pages of newspapers and seen on television calling the governor names, boasting he was not inferior to the governor, dropping the name of the NSA. A resourceful crisis manger without prejudice to his own politics would have known the game was up the moment Mbu started to see himself as alternative governor of Rivers; he should have been summoned to Abuja, publicly scolded and reposted to Borno State where services of such commissioners of police are needed. If the objective of the IG was to sacrifice the nations’ democracy in order to protect the interest of the president, he could still have achieved the same less ennobling objective by quietly reposting a more intelligent, less abrasive but equally spiteful Abuja loyalist to keep Amaechi under surveillance in Port Harcourt

  • Jonathan visits Obasanjo

    Jonathan visits Obasanjo

    IT was meant to be a private visit. But the President’s trip to Abeokuta, the exciting city that is the capital of Ogun State, to commiserate with his spokesman Dr Reuben Abati on the death of his mother has thrown up many issues. Not because it was out of place for Dr Goodluck Jonathan to be with the one he considers a member of his family on such an occasion. No.

    President Jonathan was with former President Olusegun Obasanjo same day. The popular thinking – “the popular is seldom correct”, don’t forget – is that the visit to Obasanjo was the main reason for the President’s presence in Abeokuta. That is neither here nor there. Also unclear is what transpired in the inner room of Obasanjo’s home where the two leaders – father and son, some will insist – poured out their hearts.

    There has been no official statement. Dr Jonathan told reporters that it was a mere courtesy call. No more. Editorial Notebook fans and numerous others have been eager to find out details of the meeting. A usually reliable source, who pleaded for anonymity because of what he described as the security implications of the high profile talks, has given some snippets, which he was able to piece together after an encounter with his uncle’s friend who swore that a colleague of his was there. Here is his account, which remains unconfirmed as neither Dr Jonathan nor Chief Obasanjo would take questions:

    A flurry of activities proclaims the arrival of a big man. Soldiers are taking positions. A long row of policemen and Civil Defence officials backing the road and domestic staff running around the expansive compound. A convoy of vehicles rumbles up at the gate and Obasanjo comes out to receive his visitor.

    Jonathan (embracing his host): Baba, good to see you again. You’re looking great sir.

    Obasanjo (smiling and stretching out his arms): Thank you so much. Please, come inside. I trust all is well o. Because this kind of visit … I don’t know if I’m still qualified for it o.

    Jonathan: Haba, baba! You remain my father, any time any day. You’re an elder statesman, the most respected of them all today. And we need to show you respect at all times; we need to consult you on matters of national importance, especially now that our country has some challenges and… . We need your experience to go through it all. And…

    Obasanjo cuts in: Thank you; thank you so much. Hmmm…huumm! (He clears his throat). Mr President. You know I won’t deceive you. I will be frank and blunt; you know me for that. It’s just that I’m a good man, I would have asked the guards to shut the gate. But, as a good Christian, I mustn’t do that. If I consider all the attempts made to humiliate me, with the connivance of your people, your party and so on.

    Jonathan: I don’t want to waste time Baba. You’re our father; the greatest Nigerian living today, ever patriotic. I should be consulting you everyday, but you know how this job is and you too, you’re a busy man; always moving. I beg you to forget the past and join us to strengthen the party and move it forward to 2015.

    Obasanjo: Thank you, oga President. So, you think people like us are still relevant at home in Nigeria? Abi, is it because the 2015 elections are coming? You see, any papa wey no sabi the number of im pikin, na yeye man; I know my children and my children know me. Where were you when I resigned from the board, BOT or whatever you call it? Interestingly, somebody – I won’t mention his name – told me that you would collect the letter and never ask me why. And you did immediately and never asked me why. That means you never wanted me in the first place.

    Jonathan: But, baba (the President tries to stop him) you’re … .

    Obasanjo (raising his left hand): Please…please; let me talk, oga President. With due respect, you people never wanted me in your party. The man you wanted is now there. So, I wish that my feeling should be respected. I should be allowed to just siddon look. No be so!

    Jonathan: Baba, no vex. With due respect, sir, you got it all wrong. I didn’t know you were not happy. I thought you were having too many international engagements and it was getting difficult to cope with the demands of that position. Now, people are saying all sort of things. Lies. Rumours. Nonsense. They say that em…emm…emmm …that I don’t have your support for 2015 and all that. And I tell them that the Baba Obasanjo that I know will always leave everything in the hands of God. I said, ‘no; these are dangerous rumours and I’ll come here to shame our common enemies and show the world that you remain my father.’

    Obasanjo (a wry smile on his lips): 2015? I dey laugh o! Who is talking about that? People have been telling me to intervene, that the road to 2015 is full of bumps, that we should save our democracy. Go and face your job o. All those telling you that they know what will happen in 2015, that they will fix it and all that jagbajantics, they’re deceiving you o. You don’t need such people around you. And note that I don’t have any problem with your party o. Please.

    Jonathan: Sir, you remain our leader, the head of the PDP family, a big family that is the envy of all others.

    Obasanjo cuts in, his face betraying a frown. Please, Mr President. Please, please and please. Me; PDP family? That’s a joke taken too far. Isn’t that strange? All my boys – Oyinlola, Oni and the others – have been pushed out of their positions by those who are bent on hijacking the party for their own selfish ends and with the connivance of your people. In Ogun here, the whole thing is scattered, like a tailor’s legs. And I’m a leader of the party. Leader my foot!

    Jonathan: Sir, that is why I’m here. I agree that we have problems in the PDP family. There are issues here in Ogun, Rivers, Adamawa, Ekiti and some other places. Minor issues. I intend to consult all the elders and I’m starting with you as our father.

    Obasanjo: I salute your courage. God will help you, but if you want to hear the truth – you know I’ll always be frank with you – these are self-inflicted wounds. Take, for instance, that boy; the one in Port Harcourt. Emmm…Amaechi. What’s his offence? What did he do? They said he refused to give them money. They contrived all manner of wuruwuru and suspended him. Is that a party looking for peace and reconciliation? They said your people dey shout say he must not be Governors’ Forum chairman. They held an election and said 16 is bigger than 19. Haba! Even among thieves, there is honour. A thief knows when he has taken too much and he stops, but this your family, me I no understand o.

    Jonathan: Thank you sir. That’s why I have come; so that we can resolve all these outstanding matters and forge ahead as a united, strong and purposeful family, the biggest party in Africa. Sir, you’re a man of foresight. Remember you warned in 2007 about featuring a candidate with k-leg. We’re seeing the result now.

    Obasanjo: Really? That was then. The leg don straight now and I’m seeing some people with k-leg warming up for 2015. I won’t say more than that.

    Jonathan: Thank you sir. All we want is peace. We need peace. If the party is troubled, the whole country will feel it.

    Obasanjo: You see, President. For there to be peace and reconciliation, there must be tolerance. The other day when I spoke about Boko Haram; that it was not something to be handled with kid gloves, your boys descended on me. They said I was talking from both sides of the mouth. I simply suggested a carrot-and-stick approach. Is that not what you’re doing now? Nobody can gag me o; tell them that I, Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo Baba Iyabo, will never be gagged. I will continue to say my own. Anybody who doesn’t like it, dat na im toro.

    Jonathan: Thank you, Baba. I take it that all the issues are resolved and that I remain your son and that I can count on your support. I have to leave now.

    Obasanjo: Thank you Jonna. You have done well. I need to get ready for some other visitors. Today is a day for visitors and I’m happy to have hosted you, even though you have refused to eat and drink. I know it’s Ramadan but you should have tried a little. All the best.

    They shake hands and the President leaves .Some 10 minutes after, some governors drive in to see Obasanjo. There is no ambiguity about their mission. They say the country is adrift and will like Obasanjo to join other elders to pull the brakes on the slide.

    Many opinions have been formed on these visits. One, it is said, is about mending fences to realise a personal goal. The other, said critics, is about altruism – stopping the ruckus in Rivers and saving democracy so that Nigeria can get to 2015 and not fulfill the doomsday prophecy of some self-acclaimed necromancers. The governors have since visited former military president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and former Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar. Can you guess who Dr Jonathan’s next host will be?

  • Re: al-Mustapha -now that the ‘canary’ is free

    Re: al-Mustapha -now that the ‘canary’ is free

    Bar possibly the entertaining but tragic spectacle that has been running for a while now in Rivers State in the apparent face-off between the presidency and the state’s governorship, no story has grabbed media and public attention this month like the acquittal and discharge two Fridays ago of Major Hamza al-Mustapha, the chief security officer of the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, following his nearly 15-year prosecution for complicity in the murder on June 4, 1996 of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 1993 presidential elections.

    Certainly even more than the tragi-comedy playing out in Rivers, al-Mustapha’s acquittal and discharge has generated more emotion than any other story in recent times. The 53 odd texts and a few emails I received in reaction to my column last week on the subject captured the varied sentiments expressed about the judgment. The reader will find the sample of those reactions published below interesting and certainly, in the case of the longest one I received by email, quite thought provoking, not least because the writer gave himself the answer, perhaps inadvertently, to his charge that al-Mustapha’s prosecution was selective – far from being a mere “pawn in a complicated national chess game for which IBB and OBJ are the major players” al-Mustapha was the only CSO (or ADC) of a head of state in this country’s history that chose to make himself its “de facto head of state,” to use the author’s own words.

     

    Sir,

    It is trite to say that one can be viewed as a hero in some quarters and villain by others at the same time, because that is the nature of human behaviour. Al-Mustapha cannot be different – he is only human. The question is no longer that of culpability or otherwise of Mustapha in the heinous crime for which he was charged, since he has been exculpated by a court of competent jurisdiction, unless, of course, a superior court of law rules otherwise.

    What rankles is the barely concealed verdict of guilt that permeates the articles of virtually all those who have written on the subject. Whatever happened to the time-worn dictum of being innocent until proved otherwise?

    Agreed, Mustapha’s swashbuckling and devil-may-care persona, combined with a tendency for loquaciousness, can rub people the wrong way. But, does that make him a criminal? Like they say, the cloak does not make the monk, or put it more appropriately, a broken tooth does not make a thug!

    Let truth be told. Mustapha is a victim of circumstances. As de facto head of state during the Abacha regime, almost every top ranking official, whether in government or out of it, and top echelons of the private sector, kow-towed to him in order to get to Abacha. In our kind of economy where fortunes are made or lost purely from how close you are to the seat of power, one could easily understand the desperation with which some of the richest (I will not use respected) men groveled before this young major for favours.

    Therefore, by the time Abacha died it was payback time. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, that is only true when you have not faced the wrath of a man forced to swallow his manhood in the pursuit of economic gains. They swarmed Mustapha, each with a dagger as sharp as a dragon’s tail and a cudgel fitted with spikes, demanding to cut their pound of flesh. They did not quite get their pound of flesh (death), but they got something close to it – a fifteen year detention in a maximum prison that will surely leave some psychological and physical scars.

    We must all engage in some serious soul searching before making judgment. This is why.

    Some high profile murders were committed during Babangida’s regime, with Dele Giwa’s murder as the most touching. In addition to this, he set us on the path to perdition by annulling an election won fair and square. And yet Babangida, his ADC, and CSO are all free men.

    Obasanjo’s case is worse. Political heavy weights were killed as if they were cockroaches, culminating in the murder of irrepressible Bola Ige. Not done with us yet, he imposed an invalid with a terminal illness on us, knowing full well the political repercussion. Then the coup de grace – he manoeuvred a starry-eyed, bare feet school teacher, into a position of power. Today, Obasanjo struts the political landscape like the conceited peacock that he is, insulting our sensibilities with what he calls ‘successful mistakes’. Neither his ADC nor his CSO were ever charged.

    OBJ and IBB are two peas in a pod, each trying to occupy a larger space in the pod, at the expense of the Nigerian state.

    If anyone should take the blame for Abiola’s murder, IBB should be liable for setting in motion events that culminated in Abiola’s death, even though he never physically murdered or caused Abiola’s murder. OBJ, on the other hand, should be held responsible for imposing political brigandage and economic profligacy, the type never seen before.

    These Siamese twins are the two gentlemen who need some investigating. Mustapha is just a pawn in a complicated national chess game for which IBB and OBJ are the major players.

    Manjadda Iman, Sokoto.

     

    Sir,

    Your article today is a radical departure from your usual harsh tone against the major. I do not begrudge your loyalty to Gen. Abdulsalami, but you should be objective enough. Maybe you never imagined the poor major would be released in your lifetime. Now you are writing like the coward and hypocrite that you really are. Now we know those who are really afraid of freedom for the major.

    Joseph Kolo, Minna. +2348035550445.

     

    Sir,

    Your write-up on al-Mustapha was good and unbiased. It is heartening to know you can engage the nation in such a serious discourse without ethnic or religious colouring. Your prediction on Mustapha throwing his hat into the ring sooner than later is equally apt. But will he have the space to operate as his billionaire traducers are still the ones dictating de pace of Nigeria and Africa?

    Sam Madugba, Owerri +2348037110950

     

    Sir,

    Your dislike and hatred for al-Mustapha is clear. Remember your mentor Abdulsalami cannot do any favour to you on the day of judgement.

    +2348026891730

     

    Sir,

    The piece on Al-Mustapha is thought-provoking. Nigeria is still a neo-colonial state and al-Mustapha represents a neo-colonial army. What, I think, should bother social scientists is the future of Nigeria under moribund capitalism which is based on self-interest.

    Amos Ejimonye, Kaduna +2348039727512

     

    Sir,

    The canary has suffered enough from your boss and from your pen. To you and your boss he is a villain but to us it is otherwise.

    +2348037657033

     

    Sir,

    I am a frequent reader of your Wednesday column. But I’ve never agreed more with you on any issue as I did on al-Mustapha’s release. Even if he was innocent, I hope through his imprisonment Allah has touched his heart and rid him of his widely believed heartlessness and ruthlessness.

    Mustapha +2348033037936

     

    Sir,

    That was a good piece – balanced, reportorial and advisory. al-Mustapha might have got justice courtesy the prosecution’s fumbling and bumbling. However some questions remain: will Kudirat ever get justice? Will the question of who killed Kudirat ever be answered like similar ones in the past; those of Dele Giwa, Uncle Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, et al?

    Muyiwa Makinwa, Ile-Ife. +2348058475238

     

    Sir,

    How about Jonathan/al-Mustapha ticket, come 2015?

    Zakaria Ismail, Kano.+2348037878033

     

    Sir,

    From the evidences made public right from the start linking al-Mustapha to Kudirat’s murder, not a few Nigerians had expected that he was going to be convicted at the end of which a presidential pardon or amnesty could be expediently considered. That way, anybody who is or will be in the position al-Mustapha was with Abacha regime and did what he was said to have done can be certain a day of reckoning must surely come. But to be so discharged and acquitted with impunity even with so many evidences that implicated him in the murder is no less an encouragement to his likes that may still be found in our government any day. This portents a very bad omen for the country.

    Emmanuel Egwu. +2348037921541

     

    Sir,

    Celebrating such a character is wrong. He should not be a worthy role model to any youth in the North.

    +2348036972332

     

    Sir,

    By al-Mustapha’s acquittal, it is not yet uhuru as God’s judgement will surely come.

    Omololu Joshua, Akwa-Ibom. +2348052134277

     

    Sir,

    Anybody who is not ethnically motivated knows who killed Kudirat. With our conscience we see him every passing second. The one that pulled trigger is different from the one that directed the act that drips of infamy.

    Chris Arukwe, Awka. +2348034704286

     

    Sir,

    Alhamdullilah, Haruna your master Abdulsalami yaji kunya’. Allah is great. Please help me tell him.

    Maina Bukar +2348036424319

     

    Sir,

    A worldly Judge may deliver a verdict the way he likes BUT, the evil that men do will forever live after them.

    Oni Olayinka, Ogba. +2348052324941

     

  • JB/ RCC: ‘4 year Contracts of Urgent National Impotence Vs Emergency works; Ogere FRSC 

    Julius Berger (JB) and RCC have the ball squarely in their court over the former Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. The Jonathan Go-slow causing opening in Friday revealed that the contract will cost N167billion or $1,113,333,333 or $1.1billion for 127km ie N1,314,960,629 or N1.3b/ kilometre. In foreign exchange that is an amazing $8,766,404, $8.7million/kilometre. Wow!!! Talk about the streets of Nigeria being paved with gold for some people. At current crude oil prices at a guestimate of $100/barrel, the figures are also interesting. The total cost of the contract is 11,133,333 barrels of crude. That does not sound much to oil rich Nigeria -just 5+days of oil deliveries at two million barrels per day or, according to media bunkering outcry reports, just a month of bunkered oil.

    Someone with internet savvy should please compare and publish the price of a kilometre of road worldwide to see if we are getting a competitive price. We may respect JB as builders of fine roads and bridges and are forced by authorities to tolerate RCC. Can we blame RCC for the Ibadan-Ife Road? We have thousands of Nigerian engineers doing a lot of nothing due to lack of patronage and payment for past contractual projects by governments –the so-called internal debt calculated in trillions of naira. What is the terrain that will cost this amount of money? Widening the long bridge to six lanes?

    But even more importantly, why on earth should the job take four long years or 1460 days or 1252 working day excluding weekends? The Chinese are building the tallest building in the world in just six months. This contract has long since been a deadly laughing stock among Nigerians like the East West Road, the Second Niger Bridge and the ‘Power Failure Projects’ which have all rightly been called ‘Contracts of Urgent National Impotence’!

    With millions of lives affected by the Expressway daily, surely it should be an 18 months or even under a year ‘Contract of Urgent National Importance’. Why no urgency, day and night work, 24/7 work with 10 different teams doing 10km each on each side? There are millions unemployed ready to be recruited and trained. Even the army of NYSC professionals can be deployed to participate in the work.

    Enough is enough. Four years or not, the first assignment for the contractors should be ‘Emergency’, to quickly inspect the road and fill all potholes, of which there are about 1000 serious life-threatening ones  and fill in jagged road edges in over 500 spots. This palliative strategy is not a joke but life-saving and time saving and should be implemented now, this week and completed in seven days. Let the contract begin! There should be no more road deaths due to potholes and jagged road edges which cause vehicles to swerve and crash. Let no Nigerian die on the expressway from today. This burden we place on Julius Berger and RCC management, chief executives and shareholders. They have not get a contract with Nigeria but with Nigerian travellers –men, women and children who simply want to get from A to B, Lagos to Ibadan safely.  ‘JB/RCC, come over to Macedonia and save us.’

    Will the Federal Ministry of Works again be rightly or wrongly accused of devilish delays, diversions, placing greed over service to the nation, corruption and all manner of machinations to cause obstruction? We must remember that there was already an approved design and work on the third lane had successfully gone from Lagos to beyond the Redemption Camp before Obasanjo revoked the World Bank contract in order to concession it. And what a disaster that decision was for Nigerian travellers. Do Nigerians not deserve an apology for having been forced to suffer for so long and being so shoddily treated by those supposed to act in their greater interest-politicians and civil servants? How much was the World Bank contractor paid by Nigeria as compensation for that unnecessary termination of very good work-in-progress? Left alone the entire Expressway would have had three lanes on reach side more than four years ago, now we must wait for four more years. Note that General Gowon says the original plan was for three lanes. Who chopped the third lane- financially or politically thus condemning us to 30+ years of misery?  We should all pray that the Federal Ministry of Works behaves with the above-board moral rectitude and dispatch required in this urgent matter. Just recently on July 6, I witnessed a 9.00am four lane deep, 15km long, about 10,000 vehicles with maybe 100,000 citizens, at a standstill on the Lagos Ibadan side. And on July 21, there was a disastrous 25km four lane wide line of static traffic from Ibafo to well beyond ‘Redeem’. Simple maths tells us that 25km of four lane traffic, with a lane on either side of the two lane road should actually be a 50km two lane traffic jam. Is that not a disaster in evolution? While this disaster was unfolding all the FRSC could do was to stop me at the permanent Ogere FRSC check point for driving licence and fire extinguisher check for the sixth time in my short life.

    Coming back to Ibadan on July 7, there were two accidents and the unrepentant extortion of one FRSC vehicle with its officers endangering their lives and reducing the road lanes from two to one in order to randomly select victim vehicles.

    • To be continued

     

  • Poor Riliwan!

    There is no doubt that the meteoric rise in crime and criminal conducts in the country is as a result of a breakdown in societal values, norms and morals. And of course, Nigeria may not be alone in this loathsome path. This is because the economic downturn in recent times has really led to family dislocations everywhere as many young couples now seek divorce soon after walking down the aisles. Not only this. The lack of economic power has led to avoidable squabbles in many a matrimonial home. In most cases, these quarrels have resulted regretfully in both parties going their separate ways at the slightest jolt. This way, many couples have been torn apart.

    When two elephants lock horns, it is the grass beneath them that absorbs the pain and anguish. Major cities in Nigeria are today brimming with children who cannot readily point at their family homes. Some have lost touch since they were toddlers. They probably were born without anybody standing in as a father. In many instances, the women, who are usually at the receiving end of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, have fallen victims of abandonment and neglect from the men they thought were their lovers. These women are abandoned right during the pregnancies or shortly after putting to bed either because of poor financial power of the men or some other irreconcilable differences. And the society has no clear-cut way to address these issues or ameliorate the unfortunate situations.

    Today, the rise in juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, criminality and other dangerous vices that are inimical to law and order in the society is due to the fact that many youths who roam the streets have no guardians or parents to call their own. They simply find their ways to bus-stops, vehicles’ loading points, depots, den of criminals and other innocuous dungeons as they search for the elusive daily bread.

    Take the case of one Riliwan, whose plight was recently brought to the fore by a national newspaper. Seventeen-year-old Riliwan was said to have run away from his father’s house in Abuja to Lagos because he (his father) threatened to kill him. Riliwan narrated his story to a reporter who encountered him in a bus en route Abuja to Lagos. He said that he ran away from home at Tungamade, Abuja, without the knowledge of his father, who he described as a disciplinarian. Riliwan was described as ‘looking scared and tired’ when the reporter met him. The reporter said, though Riliwan claimed to be going to  Church Street in Idumota, Lagos Island, to meet his mother, his description did not show that he knew his destination. According to Riliwan himself, he decided “to run away from home due to maltreatment and death threats from his father.” Hear him:  “I left home without the knowledge of my father. He has always maltreated me. He is always threatening to kill me. Each time I needed something from him, he would turn me down. I am not feeling the fatherly love and I am not happy to be with him any longer. That is why I decided to run away to meet my mother in Lagos. I was told that my parents divorced since I was three years old. I had to abandon my education at Junior Secondary School One (JSS1) because my father refused to pay my school fees. Each time I came home to tell him that his attention was needed in my school, he would not go.”

    In Riliwan’s estimation, he was vulnerable to abuses and disdainful treatment in his father’s hands because his mother had left him many years ago. He rightly or wrongly believes that all will be well with him by the time he sets his eyes on his mother. “I believe that things will turn out for the better in Lagos when I see my mother, although she is not also aware that I am coming,” he said.

    Riliwan added that he learnt that his mother was married to another person. Unknown to this poor soul, that could also be another source of trouble for him if the mother’s new lover is the intolerant type. Riliwan also said that before he left his father, he worked as an assistant in a bakery to survive. He said: “I feed myself because nobody cares. Anytime my step-mum gave me food, we had to sneak into the house because my father must not know. So the bakery became my life. I earlier tried to apply as an apprentice with an engineer but he requested to see any of my parents. When I informed my father, he ignored me.”

    When the reporter later visited Church Street, Idumota, a few days after the encounter, he could not locate Riliwan. Residents of the house where his mother supposedly lives could not confirm Riliwan’s arrival in the house or the area. What this means is that, Riliwan, possibly did not arrive at his initial destination safely or he might have changed his mind to go elsewhere on a second thought. The implication is that Riliwan could now be a potential area boy, armed robber or drug peddler prowling the streets of Lagos anytime soon.

    The pathetic case of Riliwan is symptomatic of the appalling situation many youths of today are confronted with. Riliwan, like other children in his shoes, out of lack of care from their parents, simply abandoned school and their families. As soon as they bolt out of their parents’ abode, they are embraced by the waiting arms of hardened criminals, drug addicts, drug peddlers and other social misfits who employ their services to ply their ‘lethal’ ware or commit crimes of unimaginable proportion against innocent and law-abiding citizens. The issue of abandoned youths, therefore, becomes a good preying ground for criminals who are perennially looking for new recruits to their nefarious ways of life.

    Let us look at the rise and spread of Boko Haram in the northern part of the country. Most of the converts to Boko Haram’s stupid and destructive doctrine are easily children and youths who have no parental or guardian control. The havoc they have wreaked on the economic and social fabric of the society, especially in the North-East of the country reverberates all over the globe. Today, Nigeria features prominently in terrorists’ map everywhere. No thanks to these misguided and abandoned youths who are hypnotised and brainwashed into taking arms against their fellow men.

    Though the governments at both the federal and state levels are now trying hard to curtail the excesses of these bad elements in the society, the havoc has been done. Now it is a sort of stick-and-carrot approach to end the regime of bombs and deaths. The federal government has since May this year imposed emergency rule on three most volatile states in the North-East. They are Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. The military are prowling every nooks and cranny in these states, smoking out insurgents from their various hideouts.

    In this month of Ramadan, Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno State, has gone a step further. Just last week, Government House, Maiduguri hosted some unusual visitors. The visitors, numbering 50, were made orphans through the satanic activities of the Boko Haram sect. They were guests of the governor who invited them for the traditional iftah (breaking of fast). In addition to the cosy meals they had with their host and other dignitaries in attendance, they all bagged scholarships to pursue their education. The scholarships are designed to cut across orphans from both Muslim and Christian homes, as the government has promised to also host orphans from Christian homes during Christmas. The governor then impressed it on government officials, wealthy residents and charity organisations to assist the orphans in their midst.

    Like Shettima said, it is now the duty of other arms of government, charity organisations and wealthy Nigerians to take a cue from this gesture. We must understand that, without lending a helping hand to the needy, especially the downtrodden in the society, we can never attain the much-sought-after peaceful co-existence. Even in the Scriptures, it is clearly written: “Be your brother’s keeper”.

     

  • In America: The Trayvon Martin verdict

    In America: The Trayvon Martin verdict

    As I write these lines, protests are being staged in more than 100 cities against the discharge and acquittal by a Florida court of George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood vigilante who confronted an unarmed African American teenager, Trayvon Martin, against advice from the police, and then shot him dead in the fight that ensued.

    Martin was on a visit, with his father, to a gated community in Sanford, central Florida. He had gone to a store to buy some snacks, and was on his way back at dusk when Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic, spotted him and immediately called the police to report that a suspicious person was in the neighbourhood.

    The police, it is necessary to re-state, had asked him not to go after the person. But Zimmerman did.

    A fight broke out. As Zimmerman’s bloodied head showed, he took a bad beating. According to his testimony, which Martin was not around to contest – nor any eyewitness for that matter — Martin had knocked him to the ground, banged his head on the concrete floor repeatedly, and was reaching for the gun Zimmerman was wearing in his holster with intent to kill him. Zimmerman reached the gun first, and shot Martin in self defence.

    It took 44 days and a national uproar for the police to arrest and question Zimmerman about the killing. The police chief said that, under the circumstances, Zimmerman had committed no crime. He had merely stood his ground.

    Bowing to pressure from a public that judged his remarks insensitive and casuistic, the police chief resigned. He now stands vindicated, Florida-style.

    A six-person jury, all women five of them white and the other ‘Hispanic,’ returned the verdict that, under Florida law, Zimmerman had reason to fear for his life and acted justifiably.

    The verdict has ignited a debate about an issue that the prosecution and the defence skirted throughout the trial – race, the “colour line” as W.E.B Du Bois, the pre-eminent African American scholar of the last century called it.

    Du Bois, who was no romantic, believed that the colour line would be the problem of his century. It is the problem of the 21st century as well, and not just in America. And it may well continue even into the next century. The noted socio-economist and Nobelist, Gunnar Myrdal in his classic study of race in the United States characterised being black in America as a caste condition – a condition from which it is impossible to escape.

    You can shed your class or your religion or your tastes or your habits or your accent or your diction, but you cannot shed your skin. Some persons of colour do crash the racial barrier —they call it “passing” — but they are the exceptions, and the consequences are not always pleasant.

    This race-based caste system is not as deeply ingrained, as rigidly ascriptive as in India, for example. But it operates all the time, in ways subtle and unsubtle. And race itself is a constant subtext.

    The Trayvon Martin verdict may not be about race principally. But race definitely played a part in the tragedy that claimed the young man’s life. If he had been a young white man, it is unlikely his presence in the community – not loitering, not wandering aimlessly but heading to the house of his father’s girlfriend – would have attracted Zimmerman’s attention to the point that he would call the police and go after him despite instructions to the contrary.

    There was a time when bells rang out loud in department stores to put security guards on notice at the approach of African-Americans who were generally regarded as potential shoplifters. Now the surveillance is more subtle, even if no less discomfiting. You are asked whether you need help, and given the kind of suffocating attention other patrons rarely get.

    The case of Dr Ruth Simmons illustrates just how far that practice continues. Dr Simmons, eminent literary scholar and the first black president of an Ivy League institution, Brown University, in Rhode Island — it was at her instance, by the way, that our late and much-lamented compatriot, the literary titan Chinua Achebe, relocated from Bard College, New York — one day went shopping, or just looking through stuff at one of New York ’s very famous department stores.

    As she headed toward the exit, a security guard stopped her and asked to inspect her purse. She obliged. She had bought nothing, and her purse contained nothing incriminating. But the guard was not satisfied.

    The guard took her to a private room, and there gave her a most intrusive and degrading frisking. Still he found nothing. For him, it was all in a day’s work, until the store learned the next day the identity of Dr Simmons from her attorney. She graciously accepted their apologies and made no issue of the matter. That was racial profiling at work.

    At American diners, you no longer find the kind of creeping discrimination on plaques in hotels in the former racist enclaves of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and South Africa that proclaim “Right of admission reserved.” But it is never far from the surface.

    Whenever I dine out, I survey the scene, looking out for the good tables where one can stretch one’s feet and generally compress, and watch where the waiter will seat me. If he or she seats me near the toilet or the radiator or facing a blank wall when better-appointed tables are available, I demand to be seated elsewhere and make mental a note of the encounter.

    Next, I pay close attention to how I am being waited on vis-à-vis other patrons. If they just slap the plate on the table and move on but fuss on diners of a different colour, it confirms my worst fears. When I finish eating, I clean my mouth with the napkin, take the check to the counter and pay the exact amount on it, leaving nothing for the waiter.

    The waiter in turn rejoices that he or she didn’t waste precious energy fussing on an African American who, true to type, does not reward hospitality. If the service is good and the waiter pleasant, I give the customary hospitality of between 15 and 20 percent. But I doubt whether that changes the perception of the African American as a tightwad. The waiter might just conclude that the individual is different. And the cycle perpetuates itself.

    Going about life in this manner can sometimes subvert the moral law that dwells in each of us. An expatriate Nigerian friend was walking from the parking lot to his office one wintry morning when the young white woman ahead of him, a secretary, lost her balance and fell.

    “I hope you are all right,” he said to her and walked on.

    “How very ungallant,” I remonstrated. “That’s un-African.”

    “Siddon there, Johnny-just-come,” he shot back. “If I had pulled her up and she later reported that I was fondling her under the pretext of helping her, nobody would give me the benefit of the doubt.”

    The fellow, I should add, always dresses formally no matter the time of day, in the belief that the police are less likely to mess with an African American attired like a professional.

    There you have it, the insidious and sometimes morally corrupting legacy of racism.

    No society is perfect, and America has come a long way indeed. Who among us ever believed that in his or her lifetime America would elect and re-elect a black man president? Those marching in “Justice for Trayvon” rallies across America belong in all colours and races. I have experienced great generosity and kindness and courtesy from most of those I have met here.

    But I also know many who have suffered racial indignities.

    It used to be said at least in recent times that sport and entertainment transcend race. But some of the most bigoted things I have ever read relate to two of the most outstanding African American athletes of this age – Tiger Woods and Venus Williams. And, oh, you should hear or read some of the things they say or write about Michelle Obama.

    Also, who can forget how European soccer fans throw bananas at players of African descent on the pitch as if they were starving monkeys and taunt them to distraction by recreating the noises of chimpanzees?

    The Trayvon Martin verdict may not principally centre on race. But you cannot isolate race from it any more than you can isolate it from the facts of contemporary life in America and Europe. The colour line, alas, is also the problem of the 21st century.

    You can believe that the law took its mysterious course in the Zimmerman trial, and yet show some empathy for two parents who lost their son. But it is hard to see Trayvon Martin as anything else but a victim.